Let me tell you about my last job. I worked for a San Francisco marketing group with an office in Union Square. My boyfriend had found this job first, and was so exhilarated by the impressive pay rate and the scam-like ease of the work itself that he worked to recruit everyone around him. I’d understood long ago that my true… return to article
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Reader Comments (23)Page 1 of 1 pagesWow. The third paragraph tells the story for me. Kick scratch and claw along with all the other losers in your niche - self aware doesn’t mean shit. We are hedging towards service industry oblivion, but you’re right - no one cares about math or people. The jobs that are created in this society are of the worst sort in practice and in what they accomplish.
I wish we could all reufse together, and then just work on farms and stuff.
Posted by Seth on Jan 26, 2005 at 9:16 PM Ms. Tea:
Sounds like corporate America has young unban low-income people right where they want them, ready to sell out just to “survive”. If you can “survive” long enough, those same middle income people you couldn’t give smokes to will be joining you if they don’t get a job with Homeland Security.
Posted by theloneous on Jan 26, 2005 at 9:37 PM “I wish we could all reufse together, and then just work on farms and stuff.”
Working on a farm is incredibly HARD WORK! I would rather work at Walmart for minimum wage, personally.
Of course, anyone with even a modicum of ambition can learn a trade or a profession. Doing so makes life MUCH easier! Or they can just sit around and blame “the system”; easier, but much less satisfying. . .
Posted by aFather on Jan 26, 2005 at 10:07 PM Did everyone completely miss the point of this story? You don’t CARE about corporate America when you’re poor. ALL you care about is taking care of yourself and not depending on your parents or whatever. Political correctness and the evlis of Big Tobacco are non-issues.
What’s sad is something that most readers of ITT won’t pick up on - that in the United States’s (and perhaps any English-speaking country’s) culture of independence, prostitution is actually preferable to living with your family or friends for a while.
I’m American, too, and have turned (and would, again, turn, if necessary) to distasteful and illegal activities to make rent before going to my mother’s place, a place that I haven’t been able to bring myself to call “home” since I was about 18 years old. I wish I wasn’t like that, because now I live in a country where people would never even DREAM of going completely independent of their families ANYWAY. They would certainly not hesitate to ask for help before turning to prostitution. Prostitution exists here, sure, but those are usually people with no moral problem with it, who are doing it to make a LOT of money or meet a rich foreigner to marry, and/or have no family at all.
I think that is a sad culture to be raised in.
Posted by Gregory Zeigler on Jan 27, 2005 at 2:05 AM I think all cultures suck. Nothing new under the sun.
Posted by Ryan Conover on Jan 27, 2005 at 4:36 AM This commentary has the potential for a book. “I’d Walk a Mile to Hump a Camel” could be a winner. In the tradition of “Nickeled and Dimed”, we might have “Nicotined and Dying”. On a more serious note, if you’re under 25(not height), and want heath care, actual liberty, a pension for real, quality schools and no Crawford, Alberta, give Canada a look.
Posted by Mark Cartwright on Jan 27, 2005 at 6:07 AM “Working on a farm is incredibly HARD WORK! I would rather work at Walmart for minimum wage, personally”
Hard work is realtive. Do anything for a week and it gets easier. Most work today is easier than that which our ancestors peformed. Work at Wal-Mart for a year at minimum wage and see how you feel. Probably not physically or mentally fit.
One of the main points of the article (IMHO) is that there is not the opportunity there once was for one thing, and the structure of capital investment and employee wages needs to be more balanced. Sure the investors take a huge risk, but each week they write paychecks their employees are spending time. Neither are retrievable and the employee could invest it somewhere else.
Democrats should pursue such business models and set up grant schedules - people’d talk about that.
Posted by Seth on Jan 27, 2005 at 9:53 AM “Hard work is realtive.”
True. Virtually everyone in the US has a great life, if they were to compare it to 100 years ago. Heck, most have a great life compared to Kings of the middle ages. . . (but still we are not satisfied!)
“Do anything for a week and it gets easier.”
Your later statement (below) seems to contradict this. . .
“Most work today is easier than that which our ancestors peformed.”
That’s for sure! Not to mention all the conveniences of today (washers, etc), the entertainment available (TV, movies, etc) and just the general lifestyle (ubiquitous eating out) and most of us are better off than the Kings of yore (who had no modern medicines and no good heating or cooling). For those of us in the US (and the west) these are indeed not only good times, but unbelievably good times! (This actually strikes me as such a historical anomoly that i doubt it can last, but who am i to make predictions of an uncertain future?)
“Work at Wal-Mart for a year at minimum wage and see how you feel. Probably not physically or mentally fit.”
Been there, done that. Put myself through school that way, and felt fine. Felt even better when i could quit and get a “real” job. As i hope my children soon will do for themselves (although i can and will help, if they need it).
Posted by aFather on Jan 27, 2005 at 4:00 PM I wonder if she really looks like the girl in the drawing.
Posted by Ryan Conover on Jan 28, 2005 at 5:35 AM Working on a “ranch” is hard. Working on a “farm” is less hard. But unless you own one of the handful of corporate ag operations, both farming and ranching are a great way to progress to the poor house.
Not that corporate farms are profitable, it’s just that these chosen few get massively subsidized by the USDA, effectively wiping out Mom and Pop operations at the expense of tax dollars - and nowadays, national borrowing on an obscene scale.
I was a reasonably privileged kid from a ranch, but I share Michelle Tea’s view that all jobs should be viewed as prostitution. There are only more or less disgusting jobs, and hopefully you can make some money on the more disgusting ones. If you have to do the vile, filthy jobs just to eke out a living, then welcome to Belarus… or Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”. USA, we’re on the way…
Michelle’s article is extremely well done, and that’s my main point. But unless you’ve lived and worked in rural America, I suggest you lay off expressing your opinion on how idyllic it is. It’s the same level of bullshit rules as any other job (or small business), but you tend to get injured more on the way to going broke. And often there aren’t any other people around, so you have to get drunk alone.
Posted by Claroofus Jones on Jan 29, 2005 at 4:05 AM Call me paranoid but are these these corporate Camel whores only tobacco pushers, or are they accumulating a database to peddle to their corporate insurance whore brethern? Such a list could raise the social-setting-only smoker’s health and life insurance premiums—- assuming they are fortunate enough to have insurance coverage in these Orwellian times of course.
Posted by BrownsvilleGirl on Jan 29, 2005 at 4:04 PM you might also enjoy this tale I wrote about a camel marketing event…
<a >http://www.fastlanefilms.com/tripod/camel/camel.html</a>
Posted by Ron on Jan 29, 2005 at 4:49 PM obviously, we all feel for those who struggle to pay the bills. however, i find the gist of this essay a little disturbing. if we take her point to its conclusion, wouldn’t strikebreakers be able to offer the same complaint - that they just “need to pay the rent”? granted, shilling ciggies isn’t scabbing, of course, but the idea that principles matter, even when you have to pay the bills, is not a value that we should discard, no matter how difficult times may be. furthermore, i can’t avoid the feeling that the term “self-righteous,” unless used against oneself, is almost always ironic, in that the one who labels others is almost inescapably guilty of the same charge. they may be cold, or uncaring, or over-zealous… but as for self-righteous, that’s the poison that inflicts us all.
anyways… here’s wishing the author a fulfilling and high paying job in the near future.
Posted by linden wood on Jan 30, 2005 at 9:09 PM This is exactly why Europeans low and middle class workers oppose the IMF and WTO so vociferously. The middle class continues to dwindle, the lower class expands and the already miniscule upper class continues in its diminutive form. We are looking at global class warfare. It’s fine to be wealthy but not to be greedy and the rich seem to be more and more exclusively greedy meaning they want more than they can consume even to the detriment of others. This is wrong on many levels but if you don’t believe in God or that God has made you rich for some reason then what would be the point of helping others? All forms of life have a peak and then decline. Maybe ours has already begun.
Posted by George on Jan 31, 2005 at 2:38 PM Whoa, Gregory
“Prostitution exists here, sure, but those are usually people with no moral problem with it, who are doing it to make a LOT of money or meet a rich foreigner to marry, and/or have no family at all.”
Could you possibly be any more wrong about what economic and social forces conspire to make poverty-stricken women into men’s whores?
Please read just a little of the following to bust through the amazing number of prostitution myths you’ve managed to cram into a few sentences.
www.prostitutionrecovery.org
Posted by Vineeta on Jan 31, 2005 at 7:34 PM I related to this essay-while I haven’t been a prostitute I have taken some pretty dim jobs just to pay the rent-a thing that gets harder and harder to do these days, and I have a college education. I do think that there is a great disconnect between folks about this subject. Pushing ciggies and working at Walmart is a very blurred line if you ask me-I have a freind that works at walmart and it’s every bit as unpleasant and humiliating as pushing cigs. Who sayes working life has to be this way-the corp’s do that’s who. They try to make us all fit into the big corporate hole so we’re more easily controlled. Well,it’s not all one size fits all,just make it out there if you’re ambitious- especially if you get sick and have no insurance. People just think -oh you’ll be covered by what ever welfare program-but guess what -it isn’t there anymore.Just another great example of that compassionate conservatism. And if perhaps you do get something like food stamps or a medicaid card, if you try to dig yourself out and get a little ahead-they yank what ever help you might be using so, in my husbands case, you get sick all over again and the whole bloody cycle starts over. It’s great to talk theory, but life isn’t theory, which I think was probably her point in this essay. Unless people can pause, and be truly compassionate about those folks in another(yet not nearly as distant as they might think)economic class, this country is going to turn into the biggest bannana replublic ever seen.
Posted by Kaela on Feb 1, 2005 at 5:21 AM “The world of low-wage work is beyond middle-class ethics of good and bad.”?
“[I]... ...set about seeking jobs that offered maximum pay for minimum work.”?
I’m not too surprised that a raise of a few bucks took 5 years. While I agree that the entire ‘you work for WHO?’ thing is pretty puerile, I also reject the concept that slacking gives you the right to complain about lack of success.
I am from a desperately poor background where I sometimes went days without eating. I barely graduated high school (and with lousy grades) since working 8 hours as a janitor at night by lying about your age isn’t the best way to do your homework. Father in prison, mother on drugs, no other family to help.
A lot of my friends were in similar, if slightly better, places. Most still live as prep cooks, or nursing home ‘attendants’ or security guards making maybe $8/hour.
But some of us gave up the slacker ideas we got from our parents. I won’t get rich quick - fine. I won’t freaking scam my boss and then complain that I don’t get promoted, either. I’ve been a securty guard, and a janitor, and a cook, too. I’ve sold spa coupons in office parks where you’d get tossed out by security because of the ‘no soliciting’ signs.
The amazing thing is, by showing up on time when I was scheduled to work I’ve gotten fast promotions, raises, been sent to training, and insurance almost every time. When that didn’t happen, I changed jobs. Yeah, I was unemployed for 18 months and it was really tough. Now I work a decent job with benefits, have a ton of training and experience, and have a small company on the side where I get to write and edit for money.
Boom! Middle class. All it took was a few years of actually caring about working. I get to do what I love, now, because I never assumed it was impossible to pay the rent by writing. I lose my job tomorrow? Fine, I’ll sell cars again, or fix computers, or clean offices; and I’ll do my best at it, get ahead or get another, and be back here in a few months.
“The Man” doesn’t care about me - fine, I don’t care about him. My job doesn’t fulfill my artistic needs - fine, I’ll still write.
Posted by the Other Rick on Feb 1, 2005 at 3:26 PM “The Man doesn’t care about me - fine, I don’t care about him. My job doesn’t fulfill my artistic needs - fine, I’ll still write”
“I also reject the concept that slacking gives you the right to complain about lack of success.”
- The Other Rick
WTF…?I expect you’ll get blasted for such clear-eyed realism, but before the guano starts, let me say: well said.
Posted by clark nitrate on Feb 1, 2005 at 4:48 PM I am sorry, but if you do not go to college or learn a trade, this is what happens in the US today. Untrained labor is a dime a dozen. T
I know plenty of poor, working-class, single mothers who go to night classes just so that they can better themselves.
Whiny 20 somethings make me wince. Blaming the Man makes you sound really spoiled, I am sorry. The working mothers who have to take care of infants and still find both the money and time to go to college should be an inspiration to you
Posted by Prof on Feb 3, 2005 at 10:57 PM I’ve been freaking out today because I did something last night that I wouldn’t normally do… Let somone photograph my license.
My friends and I were hanging out at an East Village bar when a young woman approached us and asked if we’d like some coupons for Camel. “I don’t smoke,” I told her.
“How about your friend, then?”
Well, my friend, a smoker, said, “Sure.”
She asked him for his ID, and he pulled out his passport, which stated that he lived in Montreal. “Don’t you have a US state-issued ID?” she asked. (I’m guessing she didn’t see the Montreal listing.)
I explained, “He’s from Montreal.” There was also a bit of a language barrier as my friend’s English - while better than my French (by far!) - is still not too easy to understand in a bar with loud music. At least, not until you’ve gotten used to speech patterns, etc.
She asked if I’d just use my license and he could answer the questions. I said, “Sure.”
Now, this kinda goes against what I believe. For one thing, we live in a society filled with identity theft. For another, I hate smoking. And, I believe the tobacco industry has behaved abominably over the years. If my friends want to do it, that’s their business, but I don’t have much of a desire to help them. But for some reason, I said yes. Was it a sort of peer pressure? Perhaps. I don’t know. But it WAS stupid.
As someone said, my information is now in a tobacco company’s database. Could this be sold to an insurance company? Could be. I did make sure to give a fake phone # *and* I didn’t sign a real signature. (Plausible deniability, such as “My friend was holding my wallet at the time.) Of course, if an insurance company did say, “But your name is in this database,” I’d have an easy argument: “Test my lungs.” Or, perhaps, “Ask anyone who’s ever known me whether I smoke… Or even drink or do any drugs. The answer will be no.”
But still, I feel like an idiot. I didn’t even ask for any sort of ID. For all I knew, it was an elaborate scam designed to get people’s information. There was no guarantee that those coupons were even real! That’s what brought me to this article today: I was looking for confirmation that Camel does these sorts of promotions.
I feel for Michelle. Personally, I’ve been lucky. Well… Somewhat. I spent my first seven years out of college working in the financial world. I hated the work, but the hours and my relative youth meant I could stay up late every night going out till 2 or 3 AM. Now I’ve been teaching for 10 years and I’m much happier. I now feel like I’m doing something worthwhile with my life.
I’ve had many friends who’ve had to do crappy jobs over the years, but this one sounds truly horrible. I’d hate to have to do what Michelle did. And now I’m really glad I didn’t act like a jerk to the person who came up to us last night. I still think I should’ve said no, but (a) I’m glad to know that this *is* an actual Camel operation and (b) it’s nice to know she earned some money.
But it was still dumb to give someone my license to photograph.
Posted by Harrison B on May 30, 2005 at 7:01 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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